BOOK
679
BOOK
"'Tlie Book of the Common Prayer and Administra-
tion of the Sacraments and other Rites and Cere-
monies of the Church after the Use of the Church
of England". Before this date (with some recent
exceptions) the services had always been conducted
in Latin; and though there were various "uses",
e. g. Salisbury, Hereford, Bangor, York, and Lincoln,
these were all derived from, and for the most part
identical with, the Roman liturgy. "Altogether,
.some eighteen English uses are known. . . . With-
<i;t exception these English Missals are Roman —
l!iey have the Roman Canon to begin with; they
have the Roman variables; in short, their structure
is identical with that of the Roman Missal" (J. Wick-
ham Legg, 27 February, from a correspondence in
"The Guardian", February and March, 1907).
Though the motive for the introduction of the new
liturgj' is stated to be the desire for uniformity,
simplicity, and the edification of the people, it is
clear that this was merely a pretext. The real
motive was the removal from the service books of
the doctrines rejected by the Protestant Reformers.
Lex orandi, lex credendi. The old books clearly
contained the Real Presence, the Sacrifice of the
Mass, Invocation of the Blessed Virgin and the
Saints, Prayer for the Dead, the Seven Sacraments,
with Auricular Confession, and a Sacrificing Priest-
hood. The Act of Uniformity states that the king
by the advice of Somer.set and the rest of the Council,
"appointed the archbishop of Canterbury and cer-
tain of the most learned and discreet bishops and
other learned men of this realm" to draw up the new
book. Who these were, besides Cranmer, cannot
now be determined. No list is known earlier than
that given in Fuller's "Church History", published
in 1G57. However, "the history of the Prayerbook
down to the end of Edward's reign is the biography
of Cranmer, for there can be no doubt that almost
every line of it is his composition" (Mason, Thomas
Cranmer, 139). With regard to the authority by
which it was composed and issued. Abbot Gaso.uet
and Mr. Bishop have carefully gone over the evidence
(Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer, eh. x),
and they have come to the same conclusion as the
Anglican Canon Dixon, who affirms that "the Con-
vocation of the clergy had nothing to do with the
first Act of Uniformity of religion. Laymen made
the first English Book of Common Prayer into a
schedule of a penal statute. As little in the work
itself, which was then imposed upon the realm, had
the clergy originally any share" (Hist, of the Ch.
of England, III, 5). The instruction given by royal
authority was that the framers of the book should
"have as well eye and respect to the most sincere
and pure Christian religion taught by scripture as
to the usages in the primitive Church". How this
was carried out will appear when we come to examine
the contents of the book. Meantime we may ob-
serve that the Communion Service cannot be classed
with any of the old liturgies, but rather resembles
the form drawn up by Luther in 1523 and 1526.
Both agree in the elimination of anything denoting
offertory or sacrifice in the true sense of the words.
"Even if it were not an ascertained fact that during
the year when it was in preparation, Cranmer was
under the influence of his Lutheran friends, the
testimony of the book itself would be sufficient to
prove beyond doubt that it w.as conceived and
drawn up after the Lutheran pattern" (Gasquet and
Bishop, op. cit., 228; cf. ch. xiii). Though there
were of course some who welcomed the new service,
the imposition of it gave rise to strenuous opposition
m most parts of the country. By the time, however,
that the Book of 1549 appeared, Cranmer had already
adopted views more advanced than those contained
vn it, and was preparing for a further revision. Early
in 1550 an act was passed approving of a new ordinal
(see Anglican Orders) and the altars were removed
and tables substituted for them in many places.
In this same year Gardiner, while still a pri-soner
in the Tower, made use of the words of the Prayer
Book to refute Cranmer's own work on the Sacrament
of the Body and Blood of our Saviour. About the
same time Bucer completed his elaborate "Censura"
of the Praj-er Book. Accordingly in 1552 a second
Book of Common Prayer was published, in which
everything in the First Book which had been fixed
upon by Gardiner as evidence that the new liturgy
did not reject the old beliefs, and everything which
Bucer had objected to was in the revision carefully
swept away and altered. Before this book could
come into general use the old Catholic services
were restored by Mary. After her death the Second
Book was imposed by Elizabeth in 1559 with some
few, though important, changes. Further changes
were made in 1604 and again in 1662, but the Prayer
Book as a whole practically remains what it was
in 1552. "The position which was deliberately
abandoned in 1549 and still further departed from
in 1552 has never been recovered. The measure
of the distance traversed in these new liturgies by
those who controlled the English reformation can
only be duly estimated on an historical survey of
the period in which the ground was lost" (Gasquet
and Bishop, op. cit., 307).
II. Contents. — The Book of Common Prayer is really a combination of four of our liturgical books viz., the Breviary, Missal, Pontifical, and Ritual.
(1) Tfw New Calendar. — The old Sarum and other calendars in use before the Reformation contained the fast days and the feasts for most of the days in the year. Among these were the Purification, Annunciation, Visitation, Assumption, Nativity, and Conception of "the Blessed Mary"; a large number of purely Roman saints; and All Souls' Day. Corpus Christi was kept on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. The Calendar of the First Prayer Book omitted the fast days altogether and gave only twenty-two saints' days, all being New Testament saints; the only feasts of the Blessed Virgin retained are the Piu'ification and the Annun- ciation; All Souls' Day is omitted, and there is no office for Corpus Christi. Hardly any change was made in this part in the Second Prayer Book, though the "dog Dales" are characteristically noted. The Calendar of the Third Prayer Book (1559-61) re- introduced the mention of the fast days and a goodly number of feasts; among the latter, the Visitation of the "Blessed Virgin Mary", the Conception and the Nativity of "the Virgin Mary"; but no special offices were appointed for any of these feasts. "The reason why the names of these Saints-days and Holy-days were resumed into the calendar are various", says Wheatly in "A Rational Illustration of the Book of Comm. Prayer" (Pt. II, Introd.), "some of them being retained upon account of our Courts of Justice. . . . Others are probably kept for the sake of such tradesmen as are wont to cele- brate the memory of their tutelar Saints. . . . And again, it has been the custom to have Wakes or Fairs kept upon these days; so that the people would be displeased if their favourite Saint's name should be left out. . . . For these reasons our second reformers under Queen Elizabeth . . . thought con- venient to restore the names of them to the Calendar, though not with any regard of being kept holy by the Church".
(2) The Brevian/. — The Sarum Breviary contained the canonical Hours, the Psalms distributed through the week, antiphons, versicles and responses, and Little Chapters much the same as the modern brev- iary — of course without the modifications since introduced by St. Pius V and later pontiffs. But
